I'm your host, Jester. I've been an EVE Online player for about six years. One of my four mains is Ripard Teg, pictured at left. Sadly, I've succumbed to "bittervet" disease, but I'm wandering the New Eden landscape (and from time to time, the MMO landscape) in search of a cure.You can follow along, if you want...

Wednesday, February 19, 2014

Kill of the Week: Stabbing

For only the second time since I started doing KOTWs, absolutely nobody sent me any fun sub-cap kills. So I guess it must have been pretty quiet out there. ;-)

It's OK, though. I think for KOTW I'm gonna go with this Anshar. The kill is fairly run of the mill, a Marmite Collective gank in Ignoitton. But the Marmites seem to have refreshed an old jump freighter ganking strategy in this system. As far as I can tell, the strategy involves a Stabber with a 100MN MWD, warp speed rigs, and a probe launcher. It puts out combat probes in advance near (one of?) the two stations in this system and sits just off-grid, aligned down to one of them. When it sees a cyno light on its target station, the pilot spams scan, waits for the JF to appear, then immediately warps in.

By the time the Stabber lands on grid, the system is just loading for the new entry (remember, you appear in Local and in the system a second or two before you yourself see the grid or anything on it). If the Stabber pilot is quick enough, he can activate the MWD and get a pretty good bump on the JF before the JF pilot has a chance to collect himself. If he or she is quick with the dock button, they can still escape. But if their reflexes aren't good, the JF can sail a few thousand meters out of dock range. After that, all it takes is a web and a good traditional bumping ship like that Machariel. The Stabber trick works because of the greatly increased mass provided by the oversized MWD, and the oversized MWD isn't too hard to fit on the Minmatar hull.

This past week, the Marmites have nailed a dozen or so JFs in Ignoitton and it's always just a few pilots involved. Nice kills, guys!

I know my honorable mentions this week wouldn't be complete without a ridiculous unbuffered mission ship, a ridiculous solo wormhole SMA kill for an enormous profit, and an avoidable high-sec 10 billion ISK freighter gank. So there you go. ;-) The first guy responded to his pain by suggesting on the EVE-O forums that battleships should receive a buff of between double and quadruple their tank. Hint: it wouldn't have helped. You didn't fit buffer.

Finally, someone remind the Nulli Secunda guys that when their career in high-sec starts up again soon, they have to care about things like war-decs. This Nightmare pilot can explain it.

Number of dead super-caps last week: 5

Two weeks in a row with five supers dead, only this time a pair of titans were involved! First up though was this Nyx and this Aeon, killed in Khanid low-sec. Now the politics behind this one are pretty mixed up and confused. In the larger fight that these two supers died you're gonna see a lot of different players. However, nobody seems to be arguing that Surely You're Joking was going after JIHADASQUAD moon towers with a smallish dread fleet. Psychotic Tendencies/I-RED came in with an AHAC/T3 fleet and attacked the dreads -- apparently linking up with JIHADASQUAD -- and SYJ escalated with an triage Archon and support fleet.

However, a miscommunication resulted in three(?) JIHADASQUAD supers jumping in... at 0 range on the SYJ dreads. The consequences were predictable. All would likely have died but for the fact that the SYJ fleet apparently had only a single hictor, a Phobos. From there, the fight became even more confused with drops and counter drops and dreads at short range and dreads at long range. The scent of capital blood called Pandemic Legion. But by that time, the two supers were long dead.

Next up, this TEST Avatar killed by Pandemic Legion. This one just comes down to good research. This was a known titan pilot who apparently had gotten a little bit too predictable in his cyno chain choices. The PL scout predicted what his next jump would be, burned some eyes in there and when the titan character disappeared from one system, a hictor was already in warp to the cyno in the jump-in system. Nice bit of detective work! It also features one of the more expensive titan pods I've seen lately.

Next to die was this Nyx in U0W in Detorid, killed by a massed group of SOLAR FLEET supers. No word on how this one got caught. But given that it was last seen attacking an SBU in the system it died in, chances are pretty good that someone had a good scan of his hiding place and the patience to wait a day for him to log back in.

Finally, this Avatar was also killed by PL, this time in Kinakka. Both TMC and EN24 have covered this one and the details are more or less identical: this titan was providing bridging support for a fight in another system. The pilot claims that he had safe logged-off the titan but instead SniggWaffe pilots found the Avatar drifting out of POS shields and called their big brother to deal with it.

EVE Online and the EVE logo are the registered trademarks of CCP hf. All rights are reserved worldwide. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners. EVE Online, the EVE logo, EVE and all associated logos and designs are the intellectual property of CCP hf. All artwork, screenshots, characters, vehicles, storylines, world facts or other recognizable features of the intellectual property relating to these trademarks are likewise the intellectual property of CCP hf. CCP hf. has granted permission to Jester's Trek to use EVE Online and all associated logos and designs for promotional and information purposes on its website but does not endorse, and is not in any way affiliated with Jester's Trek. CCP is in no way responsible for the content on or functioning of this website, nor can it be liable for any damage arising from the use of this website.